governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation

Posts tagged ‘Apple’

So what did the Silicon dudes, collectively representing around $500 billion in purchasing power, think of the case placed before them by the self-made, roughhewn yet charismatic Indian Prime Minister — the man with a penchant for the dramatic?

From the looks of it, they thought he was kosher. Someone they could talk turkey with. Of course they are pretty constrained in what they can do. They are businessmen — oddly all of them are men. Inflating their egos and appealing to them for “help” can soften them a bit. But, ultimately, business folks live and die by the shareholder wealth.

The good news is that India fits in well even on this metric. We have the numbers. We shall be the most populous country by 2030. More importantly, each of us would also have decent purchasing power by then — Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants each of us to have $13,500 per year in today’s value terms.

This is improbable. But even if we get to just half of that, which is possible, we would be as “well off” as China is today. That is not very rich by the standards of the rich, but definitely upper middle class — no mean achievement for a country whose diplomats still, habitually swear by the begging bowl approach in international negotiations.

An additional $50 trillion in purchasing power over 15 years makes all business drool — not just in the Silicon Valley. The annual revenues of the Fortune 500 companies is $ 12.5 trillion — a tidy sum that’s more than nine times India’s GDP. Okay, so now we know why all those kind business folk turned up dutifully to be with

Mr Modi. But why then did the Indian Prime Minister bother to go through with the dance? After all, if India is such an irresistible market, then shouldn’t the Fortune 500s be rushing in to occupy the 500,000 apartments which lie unoccupied today in India?

Two factors explain the asymmetry between the hubris at home and the fizz abroad.

First, Team India is a big ship. Stoking the fire in its oversized belly and changing course takes time. Until the crumbling “plumbing” is fixed, citizens will react to the bad smells reaching them. Fixing the leaks is still a work in progress as illustrated by the sermons delivered to the Prime Minister at his meet with the Fortune 500 crowd.

In contrast, business overseas view visitors much the same as co-passengers on a flight. This goes for both the older, preachy Fortune 500, who are classic bullies, or the more gentle, other-worldly yogis in Silicon Valley, adept at the “rope trick” of quietly raking in billions without a bottomline to support the extraordinary valuations of their stock. They will engage whilst the flight lasts, knowing they can end the conversation when they please. But anything more substantive is only on mutually acceptable terms — these being the “bottomline” for the “sunset community” in the Fortune 500 group and the “top line” for the Silicon geeks.

India presents more immediate potential for the “top line” obsessed Silicon entrepreneur. Their escalator is founded on growing the business, not solely much on growing profits. This is not to say that there are no profits to be made in India. But Asian companies from Japan, China, and Korea in sunset industries, are better placed to be responsive to the fragmented Indian market than a Fortune 500 corporate, which survive on scale not agility.

It is no wonder then that whilst Prime Minister warmed up instinctively to the Silicon Valley crowd. The interaction with the “500 dinosaurs” was stiff, formal and somewhat resigned, as in a divorce case, where both sides talk at each other rather than with each other.

Thankfully, Silicon Valley is more vital for India’s urgent “development” needs than the czars of Wall Street, Detroit or Houston. San Jose and New Mexico is about disruptive innovation. This “value” shapes business processes, supply lines and determines who the next “legend” will be. This resonates well with the “individualistic” Indian.

The electron is the best antidote for exclusion — the proverbial mongoose to the snake of elite privilege and patronage. Digital access democratises access to information and knowledge especially if customised in India’s 22 languages. Connecting 600,000 villages and all educational institutions with broadband will provide Internet access to all.

Nandan Nilekani’s UID is a game changer which is being actively expanded for the direct transfer of subsidy and to ease public transactions. Its power lies in its ability to target public interventions narrowly, much like a micro-surgeon.

Digital access enhances communication and remote participation even in local events, a feature crucial for a country of domestic migrants, where 25 per cent of the people live away from where they were born.

The proposed digital archiving of individual data-identity, health and education records in secure “lockers” liberates the marginalised in particular who have no permanent residence, live in insecure places and are frequently required to produce these documents for temporary jobs and to access public services.

For the elite personalised service via human interaction elevates their own sense of entitlement. But a dalit, whose very shadow is abhorrent to some, may prefer an impersonal, indeed robotic, neutral, service provider, like an ATM which is available 24×7 to suit varying work schedules. Street dwellers will be the first to benefit from lower pollution if tele-meetings and remote work cuts the need to commute. The primary beneficiaries of tele-medicine will be remote villages where all they have today is the village “Bengali” doctor.

Information trawled from social media by specialist apps helps to counter terror, manage disasters better and get real time feedback on the quality of public services.

Digital India is the key to critical aspects of inclusive development, enhancing the “efficiency” of public investment and more “decent” jobs.

But this is not the real reason why Prime Minister Modi is happiest talking “new” technology. Behind his stern “Samurai” exterior lies a romantic, who believes that empowered individuals — the quintessential “Marlboro” person can change the world. To do this San Jose is a far better door to walk through than Wall Street. Don’t be surprised if you see him at the “Burning Man” festival — the new technology parallel to the old world Davos — a fun meet of the free spirited and those who imagine a better world, held annually in the Nevada desert, over the Labor day weekend.

The Republican sweep of the mid-term Senate elections in the US closely resembles the Modi wave in India. In both cases, electoral disgust with wooly idealism and unfulfilled promises fueled the wave.

In the US, Janet Yellen, Chair of the Federal Reserve caused a stir on October 17 by labelling as “stagnant” the living standards of the “aam” American – a seeming indictment of the last seven years of Democrat rule. She next made already raised Democrat eyebrows, merge with the hair line, by citing the inheritance of wealth as a significant pool of economic opportunity.

Both statements are anathema for the Democrats for whom income inequality is only a necessary evil and inheritance of wealth, opposed to the American dream of making good on one’s own steam. Is Yellen playing to the Republicans?

If it was India, Yellen’s strategy would be viewed as a technocrat aligning to the tune of new masters. Party lines in India are androgynous, vague and fungible in any case. Political stances on specific issues are not nuanced. When horns are locked between parties, the driver is mostly to play “spoiler” rather than differences on technical or ideological grounds.

But for a dilution of “neo liberal” ideologies in the US, close to the heart of the Democrats since Bill Clinton initiated them, is a serious event signaling a never before ideological convergence between the Democrats- associated with “big government, social protection and wealth redistribution” -and the more “conservative, small government, pro-business” Republicans.

Such a workable convergence of ideologies is sorely needed in the US, where the Republican dominated House of Representatives and now the Senate can torpedo any chance of President Obama having a meaningful second term.

The American parable has lessons for India. The handsome mandate won by the Modi led BJP in May 2014 and again recently in the Maharashtra and Haryana state assembly elections has spawned acrimony and worse, between India’s two main national parties: the BJP and the Congress. Frankly this is uncalled for. In sharp contrast the ex-PM, Manmohan Singh, who is a Rajya Sabha MP, is setting a good example by regularly and positively contributing to issues across party lines in Parliamentary Committees. PM Modi and FM Jaitley seem to have established a working relationship with the technocratic, ex-PM. This augurs well for the substance of confabulations in the parliamentary committee on Finance. We hope the Modi Sarkar (government) will expand the opportunities for such positive collaboration across party lines, especially with technocratic talent.

Media reports suggest that the erstwhile Planning Commission will be reconfigured, in early 2015, into a forum for hands-on collaboration between state government and the Union. This is just what is required.

The Modi electoral wave is shrinking the number of non-BJP state governments rapidly. Maharshtra and Haryana are now with the BJP. Delhi, which is now on way to the polls, is likely to follow. As the electoral clout of the BJP grows, it will inevitably induce a push back from threatened regional and marginalised national parties.

The British successfully used the “safety valve” of participative deliberations for decades, to secure political harmony. Bleeding opposition parties by productively engaging their technocrats can not only meet the capacity challenge the BJP currently faces, but also restrain opposition parties from being “spoilers”.

As in the US, Indian voters have “hunkered down” and adopted a black and white perspective. The choices have shrunk to either a vote for nebulous concepts of pluralism; democracy; liberalism (Congress and its spin offs) or a vote for economic self-interest (BJP and select Regional Parties). Between the two options, clearly acting in one’s economic self-interest is winning.

The Modi Sarkar has a huge opportunity to tap into this narrowing of the voter expectations. Here are two steps which can play to their new expectations:

First, after wowing the young electorate with a media savvy, electronically charged campaign, the likes of which has never been seen in India, the Modi Sarkar cannot now tamely go back to the netherworld of the paper file bound by red tape.

Google, Microsoft and Apple can facilitate real time digital communication between government, business and citizens. But unless connectivity become pervasive; the quality of access improves and the cost of access is resonable, large swathes of our citizens remain excluded.

More importantly, what use is it for a citizen to record and report crime instantly, using a smartphone, if the response time of the police and medical teams runs into hours if not days? Unless government processes are digitized to seamlessly integrate digital inputs and establish electronic audit trails of action taken, vast pools of sloth and inefficiency will continue to confound citizen expectations.

We are not moving up the ladder of digitization of public systems and interface fast enough, thereby keeping transparency, accountability and participation levels very low. Can the PM set May 27, 2015-a year since assuming office- as the deadline after which all submissions to the PMO must be electronic?

Second, young voters are unlikely to be impressed with the hoopla around the skills agenda as it currently exists. Even skilled workers do not have jobs today. Our 3000 engineering institutes churn out 1.5 million graduates every year, many of dubious quality. Around one half waste the skills acquired as no jobs exist. Jobs can only be created over time. During the interim a “holding strategy” is needed.

The skills agenda is a copy of the “holding strategy” in developed countries, where kids without jobs can continue studying at state expense. This is extremely wasteful. Far better, in the Indian context, to incentivize kids early to opt for learning-on-the-job. The traditional system of learning under an “Ustad” (mentor) can be kick started by publicly funding 5 million long term-2 to 3 years- apprenticeships.

Business would welcome the move for two reasons. First, public funding dilutes the cost of training a low-skilled, young employee, who could leave after her apprenticeship. Second, businesses get to train employee in the skill-set per their specific requirement. They are far better placed to impart job related skills than vocational schools, established under traditional, technical training programs, at high cost, but no direct linkage to jobs.

For employee the on-the-job-training is a costless opportunity to network and to add skills with an eye to the future.

Clearly, there are downsides to this proposal. Employment in the formal, private sector is shallow at only 13 million. Apprenticeships in the suggested volumes just cannot be absorbed in the formal sector. In the non-formal sector, unfair capture of benefits by family members of the business owner is a possibility. But competitive grant of apprenticeships can overcome this problem. Also the scheme does not come cheap and could cost 1% of GDP or 5% of the government’s budget.

But just as clearly there are upsides. The political benefits are obvious: 15 million young voters and 50 million satisfied family members, spread across India, all of whom have benefited directly from the scheme by 2019 (next general elections).

More substantively, publicly funded apprenticeships can democratize access to non-formal private sector jobs by encouraging the entry of other than family members. The public subsidy for financing the learning curve can incentivize the hiring of deserving but un-networked and financially insecure, young workers.

The incremental fiscal burden, whilst not insignificant, is easily absorbed by rationalising the wasteful, legacy, central sector schemes spawned by the erstwhile Planning Commission which amount to more than 4% of the GDP. Also funding apprenticeships is one way of increasing our miserably low allocation of public resources for education.

The hardest thing in public resource allocation is to quantify tradeoffs. But helping a young worker get hands-on experience, as a first step towards a real job, is surely pretty high up as a national priority.